Of Christmas's Past
by The Carrot
Summary: He must be losing it, spacing out over a Christmas ornament. But… how could he not. He had never expected such a simple item from his past to mean so much.


Originally done for a livejournal prompt, number ninety something, snow globe. It kind of grew legs and went from 100 words to 300 words to over 1000. Haha, I guess it ran away from me then.

Disclaimer: I own Flashpoint, if only in my dreams.

XxX

Snow fell lightly outside the large window on the other side of the glass table, the white flurries easily spotted against the darkening night sky. It was a picturesque winter evening in the city of Toronto, but only to those that were paying attention to it. And somewhere in a large gray building in the middle of the city, someone wasn't.

Sam had his head buried in the laptop that was sitting on the table in front him when Spike walked into the Conference room, the Techies hands hidden behind his back. Watching the blonde over his shoulder Spike raised an eyebrow as he recognized what Sam was doing. "Triple security coding, secure bandwidth that changes IP addresses every 30 seconds, password encrypted file access…" The techie whistled under his breath before pausing, "Am I even allowed to be in this room?"

The sniper glanced up at his friend, blue eyes sparkling in amusement. "I'm just sending my Christmas cards out." Spike just stared at him and Sam chuckled. "He won't open any of his mail unless its been proven secure or takes him forever to get past the security features…Jevan's kind of weird like that…" The blonde trailed off at his friend incredulous look.

"Right…" Spike swallowed thickly, his brow furrowed as he stared at the computer then let his gaze fall back to the blonde sitting in the wheelie chair. "Um…" His eyes fell to the floor.

"I thought you would have been halfway home by now, was there something you needed?" Sam broke the awkward silence, noting the techie who was dressed in his civilian clothes.

The Italian nodded. "Well…we were** all** duly impressed with your Secret Santa gift to Ed," Sam chuckled as he remembered the cellophane wrapped CD of Kelly Clarkson he had given to the lead sniper and Ed's dumbfounded look to his team before Sam took pity on him and brought out his true gift. He had been much happier with the vintage 80's rock and roll record. The sound died in his throat however when Spike brought his hands out from behind his back and with them an ivory coloured box with gold ribbon. "That and it's your second Christmas here at the SRU and since you still refuse to celebrate it, we all chipped in and bought you a little something…maybe try and get you back into the spirit of the holidays?"

Speechless, Sam slowly took the box from Spike, treating it like it was a time bomb ready to go off. Setting it on his lap confused blue eyes searched out the warm brown of the man in front of him. " 'We'?" he quoted still shocked.

Spike turned his head to the doorway and Sam following his line of sight saw the rest of Team One standing there, each one dressed and ready to go home, smiling. The blonde hadn't even heard them come up behind him.

"You didn't have to do this." Sam stated his cheeks flushing a dark red.

"We wanted to." Jules smiled at his embarrassment. "Go ahead and open it."

Carefully Sam pulled at the gold ribbon, letting it fall to the side and gingerly, almost as if he was afraid, lifted the lid off the box. Setting the white top on the table he removed the tissue paper and Sam felt his breath catch in his throat. There, sitting inside a bunch of scrunched up tissue paper was a snow globe. Reaching inside the box the sniper pulled out the ornament cradling it in his hands. Its crystal clear top showed a snowy scene inside; in the middle of the ice were two children, two blonde children, one a boy the other one a girl. Looking at it closely the boy seemed to be helping the girl skate around the frozen pond.

Spike cocked his head to the side as he watched Sam stare at the globe in his hands. Peering over to the group in the doorway he raised an eyebrow in confusion at the blondes' suddenly quiet disposition. The Italian was about to speak but paused when Sam lifted the snow globe up and shaking it slightly caused the white flecks inside the water to float up.

His attention entirely on the ornament, Sam tilted it up a bit reaching for the knob on the bottom to wind up the music. There was silence for a moment before a light metallic tune started playing. The familiar sound of 'I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas' came from the golden base of the globe.

Sam was forgetting to breath. He knew he was. But the moment he had laid eyes on his gift he was no longer surrounded by his work, his team was no longer watching him. The snipers mind was transported back, almost two decades ago when Christmas was still full of joy, when there were two names on the presents under the tree. Back to a time when a smaller set of hands would pull him out the door, ready to sled, ready to skate… ready to pull him down into the snow with her. Blue eyes flashed in his head, full of laughter as ice caught in her ponytail.

As the music came to a stop the blonde sat silent for a moment before silently letting out the breath he had holding inside… for almost twenty years. Glancing up at the brown haired man in front of him, Sam saw the others had moved closer, concern etched on their features.

"Sam?" Wordy stared at the blonde worriedly, they hadn't meant to make him upset.

Feeling the colour return to his cheeks Sam shook himself out of his stupor. He must be losing it, spacing out over a Christmas ornament. But… how could he not. He had never expected such a simple item from his past to mean so much. "I-" his voice cracked, breaking off. Clearing his throat he tried again. "When I was little… my sister had a snow globe just like this one." He leaned back in his chair holding the glass up to eye level, ignoring the surprised looks around him. "Had the same carol in it, White Christmas… Sara used to play it all the time, even in the summer…"

Sam felt his face split into a lopsided grin; turning to his friends they were subjected to the full force of a true Sam Braddock smile. The first one they had seen from him since meeting him in the square and almost shooting him where he stood. "Thank you."

The smile was contagious apparently as it chased away the worried looks on his teams faces. Greg just waved his hand at the blonde, "You've saved enough butts around here, its the least we could do."

"So we're all going out for beers," Ed added clapping Greg on the shoulder dispelling the serious atmosphere. "You coming?"

The blonde glanced down at his gray uniform and chuckled. "How about I meet you guys there?"

Spike laughed. "Awesome, sounds like a plan, first rounds on Eddie!" The team leader's complaints could be heard as the group filed out of the conference room. Jules lagged behind to watch Sam, whose eyes had gone back to the falling snow inside the glass.

"So," she muttered stepping up beside him. "Your sister?"

"Yeah," Sam sighed, hearing the question as to why Sara hadn't been brought up before today but he ignored it. "Now I wonder what happened to the one she had, mom might have it still, but I don't know."

The brunette let her head fall to the side, her ponytail falling over her shoulder. "Well maybe she'll like this one just as much as her old one."

Setting the globe back in the box Sam got to his feet, grabbing the cover for the box as he did so. Blue eyes met brown and with a much more contained smile Sam replied. "You know, I think she would have."

XxX

You know it's weird, every time I see a snow globe, I think it more along the lines of a water prison…oh well.

So that was a little depressing, but it's the first thing I've managed to write in a while, don't think I've forgotten any of my stories, heavens I know you wish I would so they'd keep on track better, but I will eventually get back to them , hopefully before the year is out.

But Just wanted to say, politically incorrectly may I add, Merry Christmas everyone, Thanks for such a good year of writing and reviews, I hope each and every one of you has an awesome time this winter!


End file.
